UP Fintech Holding Limited (TIGR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the UP Fintech Holding Limited First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today, Thursday, May 28, 2020. I would like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mr. Clark Soucy. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, [ Karina ]. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the call today. UP Fintech Holding Limited's first quarter 2020 earnings release was distributed earlier today and is available on our IR website at ir.itiger.com as well as GlobeNewswire services. On the call today, from UP Fintech are Mr. Wu Tianhua, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. John Zeng, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Huang Lei, CEO of U.S. Tiger Securities; and Mr. [ Kenny Jao ], our Financial Controller. Mr. Wu will give an overview of our business operations and discuss corporate highlights. Mr. Zeng will then discuss our financial results. They will both be available to answer your questions during the Q&A session that follows their remarks. Now let me cover the safe harbor. Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. For more information about factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements, please refer to our Form 6-K published today, May 28, 2020, and our annual report on Form 20-F filed on April 29, 2020. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. It is my pleasure to now introduce our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Wu. Mr. Wu will make remarks in Chinese, which will be followed by an English translation. Mr. Wu, please go ahead with your remarks.

[Interpreted] Good evening, everyone, and thank you very much for attending the Tiger Brokers first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. In the first quarter despite the severe global impact of the pandemic, we leveraged the strength of our online model, and were able to demonstrate solid progress on multiple initiatives. Our key business metrics showed notable improvement compared to previous quarters. Total revenue was $23.2 million, a new high, and represented an increase of 136.7% on the same period last year. Thus, the first quarter of 2020 had the fastest quarterly revenue growth since our firm's IPO. Furthermore, in the first quarter, we reported our first ever GAAP net income of $3 million versus a loss of $2.9 million in the same period last year and $600,000 the past quarter. Achieving positive net income is a major milestone for our firm. It is a result of our commitment to improve efficiency and drive growth from a diverse range of business segments. We are also satisfied to report that as we continue to provide more differentiated products and services, more and more clients are placing ever greater trust in our firm. In the first quarter, we added 20,900 new accounts with deposits, a 2.5x increase over the same quarter last year in terms of quarterly new account additions. Total accounts with deposits also increased 53.1% over the same quarter last year. I would also like to highlight that in the first quarter, when global markets and all asset classes evidenced extreme volatility, our risk control policy was prudent. And as of today, there was no material adverse impact to our firm in terms of P&L. In the first quarter, clients entrusted us with more of their assets. Total account balance reached a new high of $5.5 billion, an increase of 79.7% on the same period last year. Our clients continue to diversify their trading away from U.S.-listed Chinese ADR companies. Chinese ADRs only accounted for 25% of our U.S. equity trading volume. Our U.S. and Singapore offices are starting to onboard clients. I expect to see more offshore clients using our services. Moving on to IPO underwriting. Most of the deals on the Street are somewhat delayed due to the pandemic, but our pipeline remains very strong. We migrated roadshows online from offline by connecting issuers and investors using videoconferencing and phone calls and achieved good results for the issuers. In the first quarter, we underwrote 4 U.S. IPOs, including [ Quasar ] Holdings and [indiscernible]. Tiger's ESOP business continues to grow with good momentum. In addition to new customers ranked in the top 10 of Chinese Internet companies, we are also adding customers from traditional industries. We keep investing in our system architecture and customer service capabilities and are now able to manage complex ESOP plans for multinational firms in different jurisdictions. In the first quarter, in total, we added 8 customers. I am confident ESOP will continue to obtain growing numbers of customers. I would like to conclude my remarks by giving an update on our wealth management business. Near the end of the first quarter, we officially launched our Fund Mall, a new feature of our platform that allows clients to seamlessly invest in global mutual funds. The Fund Mall presently offers over 50 funds from top-tier global asset managers, including Fidelity, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, HSBC and other notable institutions. Funds offered in the Fund Mall include fixed income funds and equity funds that span a wide range of currencies and global markets, assisting our clients to increase their portfolio diversification. In the second quarter, we plan to offer over 100 funds, as well as launch our internally developed rating system for clients to evaluate funds across a wide range of metrics, including fund income, risk, size and manager quality. This system will assist our customers to increase their knowledge about mutual funds and thus, their propensity to invest more of their assets in our Fund Mall. Finally, I would like to comment on the progress of our share buyback program. From April 1, 2020 to May 26, 2020, we spent approximately $1.5 million to repurchase 508,000 ADS. I would now like to invite our CFO, John, to go over our financials.

Thanks, Tianhua [indiscernible]. A solid first quarter performance as we broke even on a GAAP basis for the first time. Total revenue was USD 23.2 million, increased over 137% on a year-over-year basis. Our users were very active in the first quarter given the volatile market backdrop. Commission increased 125% to $14.3 million. Interest related income, which combines financial service fees and interest income increased [ 125% ] from the same quarter last year. Other revenue primarily consists revenue from corporate services, such as IPO underwriting, grew 291% year-over-year to $2.5 million. Across the Street, IPO underwriting has slowed down due to COVID-19. Our deal pipeline remains very strong. We are optimistic more deals will get printed once market [indiscernible] sides to stabilize. Interest expense increased 357% year-over-year to $1 million this quarter. After interest expense, net revenue was USD 22.2 million increased to 132% from same quarter last year. Now switching to expense. Clearing expense increased 5x to $1.8 million due to increased trading volume. Salary expense increased 34% year-over-year to $10.5 million, as our headcount grew 37% in the same period. In 2020, our headcount growth will moderate, but we will keep adding key positions. Occupancy expense almost doubled to $1.2 million due to increased headcount and office space. Communication and market data expense also grew 54% year-over-year to $1.8 million as we have more users. In the first quarter, given the more active market sentiment, we increased our marketing spending and the total marketing expense increased 45% to $2.8 million. SG&A expense slightly increased 5% to $2.3 million primarily due to business expansion and professional services. Total expense for the first quarter was $20.3 million, an increase of 45% year-over-year. Income before tax was $4.7 million. Net income was USD 3 million and non-GAAP net income was $4.2 million. Overall, we are satisfied with our progress in the first quarter. We are taking advantage of the short-term market volatility, higher user acquisition rate, and starting to see operating leverage across our business units. That being said, a prolonged volatile market caused by COVID-19 could have adverse impact on our business and financials. We are closely monitoring the situation and make adjustments when necessary. This concludes our prepared remarks. Now we can open for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Sherry Zhang from Citi.

I have 2 questions here. The first one is about our lending business. So I'd like to know why the margin financing balance was down quarter-over-quarter in the first quarter. And is it mainly due to client unwinding their positions or because like the company has tightened leverage ratio? And why the interest income is down more than the margin finance balance? Is there any pricing pressure? And second question is about funds market. Could management share what is current client AUM and fee structure, i.e., what is the subscription fees? And how much do you -- how much management fee are you able to share from the managers? And what is the typical settlement period for the funds? And do you have any target on the AUM and revenue contribution for 2020?

Sherry, thanks. Let me answer your first question in regards to margin and Tianhua will answer your second question. So the margin balance was down year-over-year because like during the market downturns, people tends to hold on cash. Okay. So not it's not that many users are taking our margins. So that's why the total margin balance was down. So during the meantime, yes, we did -- we do have a very prudent risk control policies. For certain starts, we do increase maintenance margins. So that's why you see some of those margin -- like the margin policy will get tighter. The market starts to get back to normal, we will see -- we are seeing more people taking our margin to start trading the securities. So to answer your question, yes, the balance was down was due to, most likely, the market downturn and will also have a tighter margin policies for certain stocks.

[Interpreted] Yes. Just to answer your question, let me translate. We just started to fund more by end of first quarter. So right now, we don't have much data to share. In terms of your question on how we split the management fee with fund companies. We don't really disclose that data, but we will give you some trends once we have more data to share.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand the conference back to Mr. Clark Soucy. Please continue.

I would like to thank everyone for joining our call today. I am now closing the call on behalf of the management team here at UP Fintech. We do appreciate your participation in today's call. If you have any further questions, please reach out to our Investor Relations team. This concludes the call, and thank you very much for your time.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.